‘Hudson Square Music & Wine Festival 09 with the Budos Band’

August 4, 2009

The Budos Band are everything great about Elmore Leonard movies without all the dialogue, palm trees, or Travolta: Just brassy sax, shakers, and cool-daddy-o bongos. Although they fancy themselves to be merely an “Afro-Soul” combo, and raunchy funk is no doubt their bread and butter, the Staten Island collective plays something more akin to gritty, urban incidental music—the new “classical music,” though their classical era spans the ’60s and ’70s. The music is a perfect soundtrack for today’s pairing of wine and barbecue: Highbrow in its authenticity, lowbrow in its Hollywood kitsch, and easy on the ears.